The following description relates to providing access to online marketplace services, for example, to allow sellers of property or merchandise to sell goods or items through an online auction or a fixed-priced sales channel. An online marketplace, such as provided at www.ebay.com, can facilitate the sell of items and host auctions via one or more web sites in which people and organizations from all around the world can buy and sell goods and services. Among other goods and services, collectibles, books, jewelry, appliances, computers, tickets, sporting goods, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and vacation packages are listed on the marketplace web sites, and bought and sold online daily. The online marketplace may facilitate the selling of items at fixed prices (e.g., static prices) and/or at dynamic prices (e.g., auctions).
In the online selling process, a seller may desire information on how well its goods are selling with respect to expectations, forecasts, and/or targets. The seller may want to know high-level business metrics for what was sold, when it was sold, and the selling price (e.g., average selling price of $52.00). For example, the seller may want to know top-line sales information, such as the gross revenue of their sales. Other top-line sales information may include an average sales price (ASP), the number of units sold, the gross merchandise sales (GMS), and the net merchandise sales (NMS) (e.g., actual sales revenue collected from buyers). The seller may also want to know bottom-line (e.g., final results) sales information, such as net income or profits (e.g., gross revenue minus costs or net sales minus fees). Sellers may need some guidance or recommendations on selling, merchandising, pricing, or promoting their goods, as well as some insight on their volume and margin expectations.
Participants in online marketplaces may include individuals, small companies, large corporations, or other types of organizations. In general, the term “organization” may refer to a company, enterprise, business, government, educational institution, or the like. The term “organization” can also refer to a group of persons, such as an association or society.
Some participants in online marketplaces may have business-to-business (B2B) relationships with other participants that may tend to focus on a vertical market, such as healthcare or automotive. Participants in a B2B marketplace can liquidate unwanted capital assets, dispose of excess inventory, and buy or sell equipment, goods, and services. Other participants in online marketplaces may have business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships. A business may sell goods and services to the consumer market in a B2C online marketplace. Some other participants may have consumer-to-consumer (C2C) relationships, in which individuals can buy and sell goods and services with other individuals.
In one example of an online marketplace, eBay Inc. of San Jose, Calif. provides online services in which buyers and sellers can browse (e.g., navigate), list goods (e.g., post for sale), and buy and sell various goods and services in a web-based marketplace. eBay provides online auction and listing services, in which eBay typically does not directly handle or own the goods. Instead, eBay can facilitate the listing of the goods and services on its website, like want-ads in a newspaper, and facilitate transactions of trading activities between buyers and sellers. Among other operations, eBay can provide listing features beyond what can be offered in a newspaper, such as a dynamic pricing structure, a presentation of items with digital photographs, a formatting of listing information, and customer feedback.
Online marketplaces represent a sales channel—that is, an avenue for selling goods or services—that has become popular only recently. More traditional sales channels include “brick-and-mortar” storefronts, for example, a department store in which a good (e.g., a shirt) can be sold to buyers of the good. Other sales channels include catalog sales, door-to-door sales, and telemarketing sales. A seller may use multiple sales channels to sell its goods or services—e.g., retail stores and an online sale channel such as a web site with similar product offerings. In the case of an online sales channel, a seller may either set-up and maintain its own dedicated web-site that sells only its own merchandise or the seller may use an online marketplace web-site (e.g. eBay, Amazom.com or Buy.com) that sells merchandise owned by several different sellers. As used herein, “online sales channel” encompasses both dedicated, single-seller online sales channels as well as multiple-seller online sales channels.